Video: Tyrone Wu/Hong Kong Tatler
Coco Chanel’s love affair with feathers began in 1910. That year, she appeared in her first magazine cover donning a hat with a bird covered with colourful feathers, and later that year again posed wearing a hat with a black and white feather.
Feathers would become a recurring theme within Chanel’s couture repertoire, with one of its most prominent outings on an elaborate 1925 cape swathed in rooster feathers, and again in the 1930s when feathers would inspire the maison’s now iconic trompe l’oeile fabric patterns. And in 1932, the Bijoux de Diamants collection, a line that dripped in diamonds, had as its piece de resistance an exceptional diamond-set feather piece that could be worn as a dramatic brooch or a regal headpiece.
Today, the plume continues to inspire many of the French house’s jewellery designs. Some say feathers is a metaphor to the kind of person Mademoiselle Chanel was: a sensuous, exuberant woman who was way ahead of her time, whose wings—so to speak—could not be clipped.
Chanel’s Ruban collection, meanwhile fortifies the French maison’s ties between fashion and jewellery. This unapologetically feminine line is rich with interpretations of the bow, another iconic Chanel motif. Whether wrapped, pulled taut, asymmetrical or in motion, these bow-inspired pieces celebrate femininity in the most luxurious and enchanting way.